Welcome to the United States of Amnesia, where the heroes and villains change according to the political weather. In the present political atmosphere in Washington D.C., Mr. Mueller is the hero, whose record of incompetence has been erased from the American historical memory. What is obvious is that the 2001 investigation into the Anthrax Attack was never ‘solved’ although a person of interest was named by the FBI .

“Bruce Edwards Ivins is an extremely sensitive suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks.”[2]

On August 6, 2008, based on DNA evidence leading to an anthrax vial in Ivins’s lab, federal prosecutors declared Ivins to be the sole culprit of the crime.[4] Two days later, Senator Charles Grassley and Rep. Rush Holt called for hearings into the DOJ and FBI’s handling of the investigation.[5][6] On February 19, 2010, the FBI formally closed its investigation.[7]

In 2008, the FBI requested a review of the scientific methods used in their investigation from the National Academy of Sciences, which released their findings in the 2011 report Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI’s Investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters.[8] The report cast doubt on the U.S. government’s conclusion that Ivins was the perpetrator, finding that although the type of anthrax used in the letters was correctly identified as the Ames strain of the bacterium, there was insufficient scientific evidence for the FBI’s assertion that it originated from Ivins’s laboratory. The FBI responded by pointing out that the review panel asserted that it would not be possible to reach a definite conclusion based on science alone, and said that a combination of factors led the FBI to conclude that Ivins had been the perpetrator.[9] Some information about the case related to Ivins’s mental problems is still under seal.[10][11] Lawsuits filed by the widow of the first anthrax victim Bob Stevens were settled by the government for $2.5 million with no admission of liability. According to a statement in the settlement agreement, the settlement was reached solely for the purpose of “avoiding the expenses and risks of further litigations”.[12]

Forty years ago, Bob Dylan reacted to the conviction of an innocent man by singing that he couldn’t help but feel ashamed “to live in a land where justice is a game.” Over the ensuing decades, the criminal-justice system has improved in many significant ways. But shame is still an appropriate response to it, as the Washington Post made clear Saturday in an article that begins with a punch to the gut: “Nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000,” the newspaper reported, adding that “the cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death.”

The article notes that the admissions from the FBI and Department of Justice “confirm long-suspected problems with subjective, pattern-based forensic techniques—like hair and bite-mark comparisons—that have contributed to wrongful convictions in more than one-quarter of 329 DNA-exoneration cases since 1989.”

The question that never occurs to either the author, nor the reader of this ‘news item’ is what is the US record on interference in the electoral processes of other countries? As Noam Chomsky pointed out, America is laughingstock of the world!